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Show gold baubles dangling from her ears, rocked and moaned in front of her rapt following. "We are faced my Sisters with the choice betwixt the Holy Needlesmith pair or obedience to the GreatMother. And it grieves me that we must leave the holy Needlesmiths," she whispered. "Aye, go we must to the GreatMother.. .the GreatMother calls us." And so they went, a few disenchanted Merchants along with them, and not a few yeofolk who, exceptionally skilled with the sword and buckler, caviled against the obligation put upon them by the newly instituted accords on Earth that they should draw no blood. And they all waxed healthy and strong, though puzzling as it may be, the Seljuk men waxed small over the generations, as small as the women waxed large. Dr'Anya thought of a surety it was the doing of the men's special diet-consisting mainly of dried pease and small beer-dictated to them by the ruling women, or mayhap it was genetic-the first few men migrating with the Seljuk women could in all truth have been small themselves. Though, and there be the mystery, the Seljuks often went out on raids to find themselves choice specimens-huge wights!-to father their babes. Yet the men remain small, and that was passing strange. Janni and her lady mother mused on that and talked about it at great length and the Governor swelled and spun, shifted and annotated, footnoted, filled the buffers, sucked and swallowed, and surfg. "And those Eastern Kingdom villains " began Janni, shuddering. "Base-borne clowns they are and no mistake," said Dr'Anya, "but the MotherWorldes have ever sent their kind to the colonies down through the ages," said Dr'Anya. "Thank the Great Heavens they had fear of the HighTartars 97 |